‘Mac Apps’ Archive

We hope your 2015 got off to a flying start and that the new year will continue to be a healthy, prosperous one for you and yours. We’ve good tidings to impart: as some of our hawk-eyed customers have already noticed, there is a TypeIt4Me update afoot on the Mac side of things. Today we mark the release of TypeIt4Me 5.4.0 and 5.4.0i (Mac App Store version) into the wild.

This is a minor update for the time being to prepare the ground for a more substantial revamp we plan to release later this year in celebration of a major milestone in TypeIt4Me’s long-running development. It addresses some bugs and should stabilise performance. More importantly, it smoothes over a few wrinkles you may have encountered with regard to activating accessibility in the Security & Privacy system preferences after upgrading to Mavericks and / or Yosemite.

We have taken the opportunity to clear up some potential confusion by applying the same version number to both the shareware app available directly from us and its Mac App Store sibling. As before, both versions offer exactly the same feature set, with the sole exception being that the Mac App Store incarnation (as denoted by the appended ‘i’) also supports iCloud syncing of snippets across devices. We would of course love to be able to offer this in both versions, but iCloud support is only possible in apps sold on the Mac App Store, as per Apple’s policy.

That’s it for now, but do keep an eye out for further news from us in the near future; we’re cooking up some nice goodies we hope you’ll like. Thanks for your time :)

Several customers have reported the sudden disappearance of snippet files stored in iCloud.

So far, we haven’t managed to reproduce this issue on our test devices so we don’t know what causes it, let alone how to fix it (should it indeed turn out to be a defect in our code).

Meanwhile, please make sure you keep a regular backup of your snippets file so you can easily restore it should it suddenly disappear.

See this FAQ item:
http://www.ettoresoftware.com/products/typeit4me/faq/#backupsets

If you find a reproducible step-by-step set of actions that leads to your snippets file disappearing from iCloud, please do email support@ettoresoftware.com as we would really like to work with you to stop this from ever happening.

Thanks in advance for any help you may provide and apologies if our software has unwittingly caused you to lose data and time.

Break out the confetti and party hats, because everyone’s favourite whacky noise-enabling Mac app will soon be 64.

…64-bit that is: we’re updating Sounds4Fun for Mavericks and the latest generation of Macs. It’s not quite old enough to claim a pension or enjoy free bus travel just yet, though its code heritage does date back to 1987 when its granddaddy – SndControl – was first released.

To cut a long story short, we’re looking for a few volunteers to test drive the new 64-bit Sounds4Fun and help us smooth out any bugs unintentional features that may be hidden therein.

If you’d like to help, please email beta.sounds4fun@ettoresoftware.com to let us know why you would like to join the Beta Testers group and what model Mac and OS X version you’d be testing with.

Thanks and Happy New Year! Hope your 2014 has got off to a great start.

Good day to you fine folks making your way out there in the Macosphere. It’s been an eventful week, wouldn’t you say? Here at ES headquarters we’ve just about recovered from Tuesday’s spectacular Apple media event, though we almost had to be revived with smelling salts after the big reveal of the new Retina display iPad mini. What a razor sharp beauty.

Of course, the other big news was the launch of Mavericks. In the wake of Apple’s newest operating system being released for public consumption, we’ve been contacted by a number of customers asking how to make TypeIt4Me play nicely with OS X 10.9. As some of you have already discovered, Apple has re-jigged the Accessibility system settings in Mavericks and TypeIt4Me is disabled immediately after upgrading. Don’t worry, though, for help is at hand. All you need to do to get it working normally again is follow these simple steps:

Open System Preferences

Click the Security & Privacy preference pane

Click the Privacy tab

Navigate to the Accessibility section

Click the padlock icon and enter your admin password if required

Tick the checkbox next to TypeIt4Me.app (see the screenshot below)

Close the System Preferences window, quit TypeIt4Me and relaunch it.

That’s all there is to it. TypeIt4Me should now work normally again and you ought not to encounter any further issues. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience if this has troubled you. We’ll shortly be releasing an updated Mavericks-savvy version of TypeIt4Me, but we’re posting these instructions so as not to leave anyone high and dry in the meantime. If you do run into any other unexpected hiccups, we’ll be happy to troubleshoot them with you.

Hopefully this allays any fears you may have had about upgrading to OS X 10.9 and losing the use of your TypeIt4Me abbreviations. If that’s all that’s been holding you back, we’d encourage you to take the plunge and install Mavericks. Our experience so far is that it offers great performance improvements overall; it’s even breathed new life into some of the wheezy older machines we keep lying around for sentimental reasons testing purposes. Surf’s up…enjoy!

[Edit: a few people have found that even after following these steps TypeIt4Me remains disabled. You may need to log out and then log back in. If it *still* won’t cooperate, try opening your TypeIt4Me preferences, click on the Expansion tab and ensure the checkbox for ‘Disable keyboard expansion’ is *not* selected. There appears to be a bug that switches it on for some people – we’ll look to fix that in the next release.]

Hello again, we have a little heads up for you bargain hunters out there. AppyFridays are offering a great software bundle deal right now. If you act fast, you can purchase TypeIt4Me bundled together with a couple of other very useful Mac apps at 90% off their combined retail value.

Get TypeIt4Me along with Task Paper and Backup Guru for just $9.99. Any of you who missed out on grabbing TypeIt4Me on special offer before it reverted to its regular $19.99 price point in June would do well not to sleep on this one. If you want to take advantage of it, you’ll need to get a wriggle on: the smart bundle offer expires on August 22nd, i.e. tomorrow. Happy hunting!

Greetings and salutations, would-be customers. Should you wish to avail yourselves of a copy of TypeIt4Me for the outrageously modest price of $4.99 in US dollars, you have just 10 days left to do so. Our longest-running promotion is finally drawing to a close: the current 75% off TypeIt4Me special offer will expire at the end of this month. Any of you who may have been planning to purchase our flagship text expander app for the Mac would do well to take the plunge sooner rather than later, before the price goes back up to $19.99.

If you cast your minds back to the heady euphoria of 2012’s Olympic summer, you may remember that in a fit of exuberant generosity we slashed 75% off the regular price of TypeIt4Me for a limited time. Resulting in a price $4 lower than the cost of a regular $8.99 licence upgrade, this was a goodwill gesture designed to allow existing customers to transition to our new iCloud-enabled Mac App Store version without having to pay the full $19.99 again.

The temporary price drop has proved to be a very popular move and uptake of this special offer has been high. With TypeIt4Me having remained at the super low $4.99 price point for well over 9 months, it’s our considered assessment that customers have been afforded ample opportunity to take advantage of the offer. We feel now is an appropriate time to return to business as usual, so from June 1st, TypeIt4Me will once again cost $19.99 USD. We would urge you to grab it from the Mac App Store before then in order to save yourselves some wedge, get iCloud syncing and enjoy free 5.x updates. If you prefer, you can also still buy version 5.2.1 directly from us. It’s almost identical to the App Store version but does not include iCloud support.

Any crestfallen stragglers who may be reading this having arrived at the party too late to catch the special offer, don’t despair. We hope you’ll discover that even at full price TypeIt4Me still represents outstanding value for money, particularly in view of the fact that similarly full-featured text expansion apps currently on the market would set you back around $30-$35.

As ever, we’re very grateful for all the support and encouragement we’ve received and will continue in our efforts to bring you software that will make your lives easier. Many thanks -and stay tuned for future announcements and promotions.

Psssst. Eagle-eyed followers of our software offerings may have spotted that TypeIt4Me is featured on the cover of MacLife magazine’s June 2013 edition, as part of its 20 Killer Mac Apps Under $20 feature. Why not seize the moment and grab a copy of TypeIt4Me while it’s still on special offer for under five bucks? It won’t be available at such a silly low price for much longer…

Good news, everyone: we’re pleased to announce that TypeIt4Me 5.3.2 is now available to download at the Mac App Store. Before you get too excited though, please note that it’s a maintenance update only. As much as we’d love to go crazy and add a bunch of cool new stuff to TypeIt4Me’s repertoire of text expanding tricks, this would unfortunately fall foul of Apple’s new rules governing Mac App Store updates. We’re strictly prohibited from tacking new functionality onto non-sandboxed apps in the store, and as sandboxing TypeIt4Me would seriously impair its usefulness this release focuses on fixing bugs instead. Those of you who were really holding out hope for a new built-in shortcut that automatically writes your term papers for you, we’re sorry to have to disappoint you there.

Now that we’ve managed your expectations we can move swiftly on to detail the more joyous tidings that this release otherwise brings with it. After a busy few months tinkering under the hood, we’ve given TypeIt4Me a tune-up to ensure that it runs more smoothly. A number of outstanding glitches and performance issues that some of you reported have been addressed. Specifically, for this spit and polish update we’ve:

Corrected the “missing file” message where you should instead see “do not expand” or “expand using…” in the Applications tab of Preferences.

Added the missing US flag when selecting AutoCorrect with US locale (the Union Jack was already there for British locale users).

Fixed cursor positioning in snippets including date/time.

Fixed a bug that cropped up when saving changes with a filter on.

Fixed an issue where adding a snippet to a set in iCloud would cause the focus to be lost or jump to the wrong snippet.

Fixed an issue encountered when trying to insert a clipping within another clipping via the insert menu at the bottom right. Previously, nothing was available to insert – the “clipping” menu was empty.

Fixed an issue related to the snippets file not being in its correct location (Sets folder inside TypeIt4Me’s Application Support folder).

Once again, many thanks to those of you who helped us to identify these issues so that we could remedy them. And while we’re at it, kudos to Apple for honouring its pledge to allow developers to continue fixing bugs in their non-sandboxed Mac App Store offerings.

We hope you’ll get on well with this update – it may not be a revolutionary leap forward, but it ought to improve your TypeIt4Me experience, nonetheless. As always, we welcome customer feedback. If you run into any further performance issues, please let us know about them so we can sort them out for you.

After 16 days waiting for review, TypeIt4Me 5.3.1 is finally available in the Mac App Store.
Remember that the *only* extra feature in 5.3.x vs 5.2.x is iCloud support, which can *only* be offered in apps sold in the Mac App Store (Apple’s rules, not ours).

To celebrate the release and allow any of our long standing, loyal users to upgrade to 5.3.1 without paying full price again, we are going to drop the price on the Mac App Store to $4.99 for a limited time. That’s a whopping 75% off and is even cheaper than the $8.99 we normally charge for upgrades.

If you need/want iCloud support, which works great with the companion TypeIt4Me Touch app on iPhone and iPad, now is the time to head to the Mac App Store and grab a copy for yourself and perhaps a gift one (or two) for your friends.

After 16 days “Waiting for review”, TypeIt4Me 5.3.1 – which fixes several bugs, including date/time expansion, Add a clipping and triggering abbs using TAB in Safari – is finally “In Review” and should therefore shortly become available in the Mac App Store.

Remember that if you are currently using TypeIt4Me 5.2.1 and do not need/want iCloud support, you can stay with 5.2.1 as 5.3.1 only adds iCloud support and no other features.

Users reported a bug that prevents dates from expanding in version 5.3 (the Mac App Store version released 9th July). We fixed this and two other bugs (related to Add a clipping and TAB triggering in Safari) yesterday and 5.3.1 is now “Waiting for review” in the App Store. Apologies for the inconvenience.

TypeIt4Me version 5.3 is now available to download from the Mac App Store. As promised, this latest version includes iCloud support, so you can use your TypeIt4Me abbreviations seamlessly across all your Macs – and with TypeIt4Me Touch on your iPad or iPhone. You’ll notice there’s a new pane just above your TypeIt4Me clippings that enables you to manage your local abbreviation sets and drag them across to iCloud and back again as you see fit:

A note for customers who purchase TypeIt4Me outside of the Mac App Store:

Apple currently only permits applications sold through the Mac App Store to access iCloud, so for now, the incarnation of TypeIt4Me available for direct download from the Ettore Software website will remain at version 5.2.1 rather than 5.3. That’s while we evaluate options for adding some form of access to iCloud, for example via a ‘helper’ application made available separately on the Mac App Store.